


the possibility that existence has its own reason for being

by havepatienceandendure



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Daemons, F/F, Genderbending, Howard is a good brother, Multi, Role Reversal, mostly MCU based, steph is iron man, toni is cap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23406202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havepatienceandendure/pseuds/havepatienceandendure
Summary: When Walter and Evelyn Stark’s little girl Antonia is born, she is a medical miracle.When Joseph and Sarah Rogers’ little girl Stephanie is finally born, it’s honestly about damn time.Where a fast talking Stark becomes Captain America and a reserved Rogers transforms into Iron Man
Relationships: Howard Stark & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Howard Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, I just need to get out more. Except that, you know, none of us can.
> 
> A note on the writing style: I don’t normally write this way (as in, in this style or in present tense), but on the rare occasion I write in present tense, this is the way it comes out. I also know that the pacing is weird, but I honestly don’t need to spend time on their origin stories beyond how it differs from canon.
> 
> Incidentally, I love genderbending, role reversal, and daemons, so…  
> Create the content you want to see, I guess.

When Walter and Evelyn Stark’s little girl is born, she is a medical miracle. She’d arrived a couple of weeks early, and the medical issues that presented themselves made it seem like she’d never leave the hospital alive. A weak heart, a chest infection, asthma, tachycardia, frail bones…

Most astonishingly, however, is that her daemon seems perfectly healthy.

Most sickly children often have weaker daemons – the eventual diagnosis is always backed by science, the doctors say, but daemons, especially ones so young, never really lie. It was taken as a sign that this could all be overcome. Such inner strength, they say. Such an iron will! This little lady is going to be just fine. She will clearly outgrow each ailment in time.

She is named Antonia Natasha by a beaming Evelyn and a stoic Walter, and her daemon is named Sidero by a subdued Arketa and proud Sklira. She is pronounced fit to leave the hospital – the doctor very carefully avoids using the word ‘healthy’, and his chimp daemon very pointedly avoids eye contact as he does so – three weeks after she is born.

It is in the darkness of the night when Howard and Chtízo meets her for the first time. He knows that his baby sister has finally arrived, has been very sick, has been fixed up by the doctors but still needs a lot of rest so please Howard don’t make too much noise around her she hasn’t sleep this well in weeks. In that moment, as he stares into her cot – she’s so small, and her daemon is this little soft thing around her arm, are they always that small? – he and Chtízo share a look and silently vow to do everything they can to help this little girl.

Her first word is a sound that could just as easily have been ‘tree’, ‘three’ or ‘free’. Her parents choose to believe ‘three’, for no other reason than they assume she’s a genius like Howard. Howard chooses to believe, and he tells his biographer this, that she said ‘free’, because she knew even then what she wanted to fight for.

Toni has a lot of energy for a kid who’s sick all the time. Or, maybe, in spite of being sick all the time, because it becomes profoundly clear to anyone who meets her that Toni Stark will not let being sick stop her from doing anything. Her parents’ friends all adore her: this poor, sick, sweet child who wants so badly to play with the other children. She learns when and how to smile and when to nod politely and when to show off her astonishing medical vocabulary for a five year old. When asked what she wants to do, the answer is always the same – “I want to be a nurse so I can help sick kids like me” – which usually prompts a round of cooing, very delicate pinching of cheeks and very cautious patting of curls.

Sid is usually a small mammal when Toni gets presented to the society people. Nobody responds well to reptiles or amphibians – an experiment when they are four confirms this – and Toni is not intimidating enough for Sid to pull off big animals – another experiment when they are five confirms this. Besides, people like the image of small, demure Toni and small, demure Sid, looking pretty and being silent. Toni becomes very good at maintaining a public image.

Her health often prevents her from going to school with other children, so officially she is home-schooled by her parents. In reality, her nanny will come into her room for an hour and teach her French or poetry or manners, and then her father will come in and talk at her for an hour about…something…and Toni will be left to her own devices until Howard comes back from school in the afternoon.

Toni becomes a very quick study in picking locks on windows, climbing up and down trees, hiding in bushes, and doing it all very quietly and on a time limit.

It’s just – she spends so much time inside. And she wants to go outside and see New York. It’s on one of her adventures into the neighbourhood that she meets someone. It’s a small black boy around her age, with a small dog daemon trotting alongside him, and they’re just hurrying along one of the smaller streets when she sees them. They might never have seen her and Sid if she hadn’t called out to them.

“Hey!”

The boy freezes in his tracks, and slowly turns to look at her. His daemon turns with him, then stands perfectly still. “What can I do for you, Miss?” he asks in a small, nervous voice.

She wanders up to him and cocks her head to the side, studying him carefully. She feels Sid change – she can’t tell what, she isn’t looking at him – and come up behind her. He presses against her legs, big and warm and comforting. “Where are you going?” she asks.

He bristles slightly, like he doesn’t want to answer but knows he has to. “Jus’ headin’ on my way, Miss,” he replies, and he looks down at his shoes as he speaks. His daemon’s ear twitches.

The action is probably meant in deference of some kind, but it just angers Toni. She hates it when people don’t look at her when they talk to her. The adults do it all the time.

“Look at me when you talk to me!” she demands. Her voice carries a little, and the boy looks up nervously.

“Jeez, sorry, Miss,” he replies. She’s not sure if it’s sarcastic or not – nothing seems to indicate it is – but she chooses to believe it is, anyway. People who can’t be sarcastic are boring, anyway, and the boy doesn’t look boring. Just nervous.

“And stop calling me ‘Miss’,” she demands again. Her voice is slightly quieter this time, but the boy looks around again. This time, though, he frowns a little when he looks back at her.

“You make a lot of demands,” he says bluntly.

Toni’s almost stunned. No one speaks to her this frankly except Howard – and even he needs a little encouragement sometimes.

“I usually get an answer,” she retorts.

He looks at her, as if now that he’s sure some adult isn’t going to appear magically, he can study her a little longer. Toni fidgets a little under his gaze. She isn’t used to people staring at her like this. Doctors look at her without really seeing her, a professional gaze that hones in on her bruises and her asthma and nothing else. Her parents’ friends see her without really looking at her, an image of a small, sickly child all wrapped up in a pretty bow. This boy seems to be looking at her and seeing her at the same time.

“How old are you, anyway?” he asks, completely ignoring her last comment. Frustration rolls through Toni.

“I’ll be eight in October,” she responds, because it makes her sound older than saying she’s only seven. She’s much smarter than regular seven year olds are, anyway.

“You’re pretty small for only seven,” he says back to her.

She huffs. “Well, Mama says I’m perfect, so there!” she punctuates with a stamp.

Which would have been much more effective, she muses later, if her ankle hadn’t rolled underneath her and sent her crashing to the ground.

She is too shocked – too dignified, she later says – to do anything but stare at the boy who immediately jumps into action.

“Jeez, are you ok? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that – are you ok? Can you stand? Do you need help?”

“Hey!” Sid growls out when the boy kneels right into Toni’s space. Toni sees he’s a brown bear (a cub, really, but the principle still stands), and her heart swells with the knowledge that he’s trying to protect her.

The boy doesn’t stare directly at Sid – he’s either too polite or too focused on Toni – but his daemon finally comes forward and speaks up.

“He’s just trying to help!” she says in a low, smoky voice. Sid directs his gaze to her, and she doesn’t even flinch.

Not everyone is looking at Toni – in fact, only the boy is – but they all seem to be waiting on her. Toni considers the boy, who hasn’t broken eye contact with her yet, for a moment longer before she moves. She reaches a hand out towards the boy.

“Help me up?” she asks.

Toni does not usually ask for things. People (read: her parents and doctors) are so scared of her overexerting herself that they do things for her before she gets a chance to form a question, and Howard is smart enough to either anticipate her needs or ask her what she wants before he does it.

And maybe this boy realises how monumental this is, because he takes a moment himself, like he knows he’s about to embark on something he can’t come back from, before he sticks his own hand out to pull her up.

She learns that his name is James Rhodes – she calls him Rhodey immediately and he doesn’t even blink – and his daemon’s name is Dipla, and his mama works in the big green house a few blocks over so sometimes he comes with her, and he’s never seen Toni around here before, and does she live in one of these houses, does she need help getting home, she’s only seven after all and she hurt her ankle pretty bad –

“I’m s’posed to be a gentleman and help ladies,” he says proudly, and the way his chest puffs out slightly as he says it, like he’s proud to help her out because she needs help and that’s all the reason he needs, is what makes her reconsider. Dipla seems to puff up with pride, too, like helping people is their calling or something, and that’s what makes Toni and Sid cave.

She also learns – when he tells Evelyn that he’d seen Toni fall off the side of the porch not five minutes ago and he’d immediately run over to help the little miss back to the front door, it only just happened, Mrs Stark, ma’am, he hopes she’s not too hurt – that James Rhodes keeps her secrets, even when she doesn’t ask him to.

Evelyn is too grateful to be rude (Ket’s always been a little bit of a snob, though, so he’s rude enough for both of them, hissing at Dipla who stoically ignores him), and Rhodey is allowed to sit with Toni in the front room to keep her company. He doesn’t fawn over her like everyone else does, and Sid and Dip get along like a house on fire.

They become best friends immediately.

The invitation to sit with Toni is only extended the once, but somehow Rhodey and Dip keep coming back and Evelyn lets them in every time and Toni eventually teaches them how to pick the locks on the windows from the outside. In return, they teach her and Sid about freedom, the kind that comes from fighting against your oppressors until you emerge victorious. They talk about the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment. They talk about how the ladies his mama works for are suffragettes. They tell stories about an America she didn’t know existed, an America that is bright and colourful and on the brink of something.

That brink, as it turns out in October 1929, is the Depression.

The Starks are not poor, but she can no longer go to the doctor every time she gets sick. She spends at least half of that ten-year period in bed, and by the time the war breaks out in Europe, she is somehow a woman of twenty-one. She is also an orphan – Evelyn’s sudden death in ’34 sends Walter into a spiral he eventually succumbs to in ‘37. Somewhere in between, Sid settles as a peregrine falcon. She barely even notices, and she’s with Rhodey when she finally does, when Sid and Dip (who has been a German shepherd for years) are sparring in the Starks’ backyard again. Rhodey says it’s a metaphor for how high she wants to soar, and she punches him in the arm and almost jars her wrist.

Howard’s fledgling company with his best friend Joe booms with the outbreak of the war, and almost overnight they become the most famous men in all of New York. Rhodey teases her for being jealous. She doesn’t care about the fame thing, really, but Howard meets so many interesting movie stars and politicians, glamourous looking men and women who preen under Howard and Joe’s attentions like that’s enough to contribute to the war effort, that she can’t help but be a little jealous.

Howard tries to help, in his own way; he keeps trying to set her up with people. Most of the men he introduces her to are very interested to meet Howard Stark’s little sister until they actually meet her: a short, frail-looking, thin wisp of a girl with big curls and bigger eyes and a falcon daemon who can talk rings around them even though she’s not an engineer, she’s training to be a nurse thank you very much and of course she reads the paper and listens to the wireless, she can’t do much else when she’s bedridden for days on end, Chamberlain’s just stalling for time, any fool can see that Hitler’s not going to stop any time soon and of course the United States will be dragged in –

They generally lose interest after that.

She doesn’t particularly mind. Men, she discovers, are all the same: they want her to sit there and look pretty and keep a house for them and have children and definitely not have opinions about politics. She can’t do any of those things. Aside from not being able to sit upright for too long because it plays hell on her ribs, and being too thin to be pretty, and not being able to do anything relating to keeping a house because it requires more physical movement than she’s capable of, and being too thin to have children (and she doesn’t even know, after everything that’s happened, if she can have children, even if she wanted them to begin with), she doesn’t want to do any of those things.

Besides, most men aren’t even attractive. Women are called the fairer sex for a reason. Toni doesn’t really count herself in that number, but she still believes it. With all her heart.

And the reason she does is Miss Pepper Potts.

Her brother’s assistant is mostly there to keep him in line and make sure he turns up to things, but ends up being her closest confidant. She’d taken a shining to Pepper – and Sid to Vouleiá the ferret – almost immediately, and several years down the line, she likes Pepper more and more.

Which would have been great, if she didn’t want to kiss Pepper so badly.

Pepper is beautiful and fierce and no-nonsense, and no matter what Howard does or says, her only reaction is to raise her eyebrow, hand him a cup of coffee, flash Toni a winning smile and run Howard through his day while Toni stares at her in awe. And, miracle of all miracles, Pepper somehow likes her too. Not in the same way that Toni loves likes her, but they seek out each other’s company and go out to bars and out dancing and Sid and Vou adore each other. Pepper eventually joins Howard in trying to set Toni up with different men, and Pepper usually has so much fun embarrassing the hell out of Toni on their double dates that Toni can never say no to her.

She manages to see Rhodey one last time before he ships out. His uniform is so shiny and clean and neat, and he’s standing so tall, and he’s beaming and he’s so proud to have gotten his orders, and Dip just looks so proud of him too, and so happy, they’re so proud to serve their country and fucking damn it –

She wants to do that, too.

She doesn’t cry when she hugs him for the last time – she doesn’t. If she locks herself in her room and recites all the bones in the human body through shuddering gasps while Sid runs his beak through her hair – well. No one has to know that but them.

There is one man she meets through Howard and Pepper that she does love, and that is Dr. Abraham Erskine. She knows who he is, of course – she’s been reading medical journals almost her entire life. Howard had mentioned meeting him once or twice, and she had begged him to let her meet him three times before he finally relents.

Howard tells her to get in the car one morning, and she’s so excited about meeting the doctor that she doesn’t even realise where they’re going.

“Why the hell are we in Brooklyn?” Toni asks.

“This is where the doctor is,” Chtízo says from the front seat. Chtízo’s always indulged Toni in whatever she wants (never Sid, though, something that always makes Toni laugh). Toni doesn’t know if it’s something Chtízo picked up from Howard or whether she does it anyway, but it’s incredibly handy for Toni that Chtízo settled into something with opposable thumbs.

Howard parks the car on some street where all the buildings look nothing like labs or medical offices. Toni thinks this is all an elaborate joke, and when he walks towards an antique shop, her and Sid exchange a look.

“You can’t be serious,” she says, stopping on the sidewalk.

“Don’t dawdle,” he says without looking back at her, holding the door open for Chtízo and walking right in behind her. Toni and Sid hurry in behind them, and the door shuts close as an old lady approaches them.

“Nice weather we’re having,” she says, her skunk daemon sitting on the counter.

“Yes, but I always carry an umbrella,” Howard replies.

Toni’s about to protest loudly because this is getting ridiculous now, whatever point you wanted to make, Howard, you made it, let’s just go now, and – oh.

He leads her into the backroom and through the door and yes, this is what she was imagining.

“You’re not really supposed to be here,” Howard tells her as he leads them down a corridor and through another door. “I’m taking you right to Doctor Erskine, and I want you to stay with him until I come get you.”

Toni’s too excited to be annoyed at how patronising Howard sounds, and she jabbers with Sid the entire way down.

“What are we gonna ask him?”

“We should have brought a pen and notebook.”

“I was just thinking that. Where do we start?”

“Ask him why he defected from Germany?”

“I don’t think that’s a polite place to start.”

“We don’t care about polite.”

“He might, though, we can’t offend Doctor Erskine – ”

Howard stops in front of another door, and both Toni and Sid stop talking. Howard turns towards them with a plaintive look on his face.

“Please, please, don’t do anything embarrassing,” he says.

“Cross my heart – ” Toni says.

“ – Hope to die,” Sid finishes.

Neither Howard nor Chtizo seem reassured. He knocks on the door, and a soft voice calls out, “Enter.”

The door opens into an office, and Toni immediately zeroes in on Doctor Erskine sitting at the desk. She knows Sid is looking for his daemon, and about a second later, she sees her too – a small snake basking under a desk lamp.

“Doctor Erskine,” Howard says. “This is my sister.”

“Ah, yes,” Erskine says, standing up from his seat. “You must be Antonia.”

Doctor Erskine knows her name.

“It’s such a delight to meet you, Doctor,” she says, somehow already shaking his hand.

Howard leaves her there after another very pointed look and shuts the door closed behind him. Toni sits opposite the Doctor, Sid perched on her shoulder, and blurts out, “So why did you leave Germany?”

Sid nips her hard on the ear, the snake on the desk raises her head, and Erskine blinks at her. Toni’s own eyes widen in shock.

“I – I can’t believe I just said that. Oh my – I’m so sorry, Doctor, I wasn’t thinking – ”

She stops talking. Doctor Erskine is smiling at her.

“The same reason I am helping you Americans fight your way in,” he replies. “The Nazis.”

He looks down at the snake, who seems to have taken an interest in the conversation. “Say hello, Ygeia,” he tells her.

Ygeia sticks her tongue out lazily, and Toni imagines that’s the way Ygeia prefers to say hello.

Erskine hires her as an assistant after that conversation, and that’s when she learns about the serum and Project Rebirth. Not in detail, of course, Erskine keeps everything very close to his chest, but she knows what it’s supposed to do. After a couple of weeks of considering candidates for boot camp, he tells her about Schmidt. She considers this new information for a moment before picking up every single file in front of them and throwing them onto the reject pile.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“You should have said you were looking for nice people, Doc. All those guys were dicks.”

Erskine and Ygeia give her a look, and she realises for a moment that she’s just sworn in front of the doctor, her boss, good one Toni you moron, and she’s half scared he’s going to give her a speech on proper language when he smiles and says, “Let us begin again, then.”  
It’s one of those nights as they’re repicking the candidates that Erskine asks her if she’d ever volunteer for something like Project Rebirth. Ygeia is curled under the lamp like always, and Sid is perched on the hatstand, which has become his favourite spot in Erskine’s office. He has the best view from there, he always says – he can help Toni veto candidates, see the shadows coming from down the hall, and stretch his wings out either side without ever having to move from his spot.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d be ready to be a super soldier, I’d barely make it through boot camp.”

Erskine seems to consider this. “A strong man, who has always been strong, may lose respect for that strength. But someone who is weak, and knows the value of strength, and knows compassion – that person is ready to be a super soldier.”

He gives her a pensive look, then, and she thinks he’s going to add to that, but he only says, “Let’s continue,” and the topic is dropped.  
Not everyone they end up picking is brilliant – Pepper ends up punching one of them in the face on the first day of boot camp and Toni can’t stop thinking about it for days – but there’s at least variety. Boot camp is over in New Jersey, of all places, and is meant to run for two weeks. Her job is to shadow the candidates through their training and take notes for Erskine. Both Pepper and Joe (and Vou and Allagi, who hate each other) are there, ostensibly to represent Howard and the company respectively while Howard runs things in New York, but Toni knows they’re there to keep an eye on her as well. In the beginning, most of the candidates don’t even give her a second look, the short girl with long curls in the oversized lab coat with the falcon daemon, furiously writing down everything she thinks is important. She spends most of her time with them, though, and she’s so damn good at charming them that most of them are calling her Toni by the end of the first week.

She spends each evening with Erskine going over her notes. One night, ten days in, they get roaring drunk on schnapps. She shows up the next morning with the worst hangover she’s ever had, the drill sergeant yelling the entire time, and she still figures out how to get the flag down after the men all make fools of themselves trying to climb up the pole. Pepper and Vou laugh about it in the car ride back to base while Toni tries to hold her headache in by wrapping the flag around her head. Sid moans piteously the whole way, and Vou only laughs harder. The flag ends up completely entangled around Toni’s body, and when they get back to base, Toni has to walk past everyone dressed in a flag. Colonel Phillips gives her a complete dressing down, even though she doesn’t technically work for him, she works for Dr. Erskine, and the doctor himself somehow manages to keep from laughing at her until the Colonel leaves. Even the Colonel’s daemon, Chréosi, looks disappointed, and the disappointment coming from the coyote seems to sting even harder.

The flag thing becomes a story and she somehow gets thrust into the limelight of the camp and branded with the nickname Miss America. She’d hate it if she didn’t think it was fucking hilarious, and she honestly laughs every time someone calls out ‘Miss America’ to her. Toni’s always been good at people, and she shines under the attention. Joe even salutes at her a couple of times, and it’s funny every time. Pepper’s still laughing at her about it on the last day of boot camp when the grenade test happens. The moments flash by so quickly. Erskine and Phillips are talking by the truck, Ygeia poking out of Erskine’s pocket and Chréosi watching the men do star jumps. Toni’s only sort of listening to Pepper when the grenade appears near Pepper’s feet, and she doesn’t even think before she jumps on it. A few seconds tick by, and when Toni looks up about a minute later, every eye is on her. Again.

She takes a moment to register Phillips’ annoyed expression and Erskine’s bright eyes before Pepper helps her up. And then it dawns on her.

“Was that meant to be a test?” she asks. “Should I not have jumped on it?”

Phillips gives Erskine the same annoyed look before he leaves.

That night, Erskine asks her again if she’d volunteer for Project Rebirth.

“I don’t think anyone is asking me to,” she jokes. She takes a second to notice his face – more pensive now than it was the first time they talked about this.

“What if I was asking you to?” he asks softly.

She blinks. “Are you serious?”

“Entirely,” Ygeia replies, and it must be serious if Ygeia’s actually talking.

Toni can only blink in shock. “But – but we’re not even a candidate!” Sid says.

“As I said, a weak person who knows the value of strength – ”

“So you want me to do it because I’m weak?”

“I want you to do it because when you emerge from the other side, you’d still be the same person,” Erskine says. “A good person.”

That’s how Toni gets picked for Project Rebirth. Even though she’s not a candidate.

The Army is in total uproar until Erskine explains that Toni is merely a test subject, and that if it won’t work on her, it won’t work on anybody. He tells her privately that he doesn’t want anyone else but her to be the test subject, but the Army still wants their army.

“In the worst case, it will fix your asthma,” he says with a wry smile. She tries to smile back, but she feels jittery. She knows Joe, Howard, Pepper and Erskine will all be standing by in case something goes wrong. They’re at the lab in Brooklyn again, with more military personnel than Toni’s ever seen here before.

The Army delegation shows up, gives her a critical stare, and heads right up to the observation deck without talking to her at all. They let Toni change into loose pants and a loose shirt that she has to hold to her body to keep from falling down. The pants also hide the way her knees are shaking like mad, but that’s more an added bonus than a priority.

Howard puts his hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this, Toni,” he says. “We can find someone else, there’s time to pull out, you shouldn’t – ”

She puts her hand on top of Howard’s. “I’m not pulling out now, Howard,” she tells him earnestly. His expression is a mixture of concern and guilt – she knows this what not what he had imagined for her when he’d introduced her to Dr. Erskine.

“Besides,” she adds with a smile. “My name’s already on all the paperwork, and I would know, because I had to type up all the paperwork.”

He rolls his eyes at her before he wraps her in a hug. Surprised by the sudden display of affection, tears spring into her eyes. She hugs him back just as fiercely. When they pull back, he stares at her for a long time, as though trying to commit her face to memory.

“Good luck, kiddo,” he says, and she suddenly wishes he wasn’t here to see her cry.

Sid’s not allowed in the actual chamber with her – it’s only meant for the human. Nothing in the research says that the bond will be affected, but anything could happen in there and they could still die. It’s actually Sid who convinces her it’ll be ok. “It’s just another experiment,” he says, as she hugs him one more time. There’s a separate chamber for Sid to climb into, and Howard and Chtízo personally check on him after they slide the door shut.

“I’ll be right here,” Chtízo tells Toni, resting a little orange hand on the chamber door, and Toni feels a little better.

The time she spends in the actual chamber doesn’t register, but the pain does. She briefly remembers crying out to “keep going, God damn it” and “I can do this, Howard”, but the time itself is a blur. When she steps out, the first thing she notices is that she’s further from the ground than she used to be. When she reaches out to steady herself, her hands look bigger. Not big like a man’s, but bigger. The next thing she notices is that she’s taking deep breaths, like she’s actually got the lung capacity for it. And she’s actually looking down at Pepper now, and Christ, when did that happen? She looks down at her body and wow, she has real boobs now.

It took the super serum five to fifteen minutes to do what puberty couldn’t do in six years.

And she hasn’t seen them yet, but she can feel that her legs are no longer stick thin. She can probably run now.

And, most importantly, she can still feel Sid. Chtízo opens up the other chamber and her heart gives a warm squeeze before she feels Sid settle on her shoulder and nuzzle her neck.

She thinks she hears applause, but everything is drowned out by the sound of her own heartbeat – strong, steady, not too fast or too slow – filling her ears.

Someone hands her some clothes and she almost starts changing then and there, privacy be damned, when the explosion comes and the shots are fired.

The next few days are a blur. Erskine, her great mentor, is dead. Ygeia vanished in a cloud of Dust like she had never existed at all. Howard, Pepper and Joe have already left for London. Phillips wants nothing to do with her. Senator Brandt wants to turn her into a one-woman show to sell bonds. They run a few names by her first – Lady Liberty, the Dame of Freedom, Madam Patriot, blegh – but the only name she wants to be known as is Miss America, and they agree.

She travels. She makes movies. All those things Howard had – the fame, the movie stars, the politicians, people falling over themselves to meet her – she has it all now. Nobody knows who she is, save Senator Brandt and a couple of the higher ups. By day, she is Miss America, paragon of American virtue, somehow mother and daughter of the American spirit, defender of freedom. There’s a song in the show that calls her the star-spangled ma’am with a plan, and she’s a little scared by how quickly it bleeds into the consciousness of the public. She is, in fact, very star spangled – the costume is not combat ready at all, but the skirt is short and frilly and she’s pretty much wearing the flag again and everyone goes nuts over how she looks in her uniform. Her movies are set in a made-up front where she gives a rallying speech in the costume, lets the men beat the bad guys, and then shows up at the end to hoist the American flag and give it an emotional salute. They consider drawing posters of her where Sid is an eagle instead of a falcon, but she draws the line there – literally, too, as they end up using her sketches for all the Miss America promotion posters.

And the strange thing is, she likes it. Sid probably likes it more than her. She knows this job, she knows how to put on a show and tell people what they want to hear and how to be sweet and virtuous one minute and an avenging angel the next. She likes the shows and the crowds and the way people call out her name. She does not need the attention, but she damn well likes it. And she’s good at it. She’s really good at it. She’s great at fielding questions from reporters, she knows exactly how to have them eating out of the palm of her hand, and they all smile brightly at her like it’s their pleasure to be there at her command.

The one thing she doesn’t expect about becoming Miss America is how many people want to kiss Miss America. Men and women alike. After one night in Detroit, she decides not all men are unattractive, but women are definitely nicer. She becomes very free with her kisses afterwards. Freedom for all and equal opportunity, right?

“I don’t really think that’s how it works,” Sid tells her as they’re leaving Detroit.

“What the hell do you know?” she murmurs back to him.

And all the other girls in the show – they’re not as dear to her as Rhodey or Pepper or Howard or Joe, but they’re great girls to travel with. Hattie and Dot are absolute firecrackers, Lulu and Lois have the best jokes that keep everyone in stitches, Jean can fix anything with her sewing needle, Frances prefers to go by Frankie and steals a man’s uniform that everyone denies having ever seen. It’s a nice little travelling family, and they all look out for one another. Who else was going to tell Milly what a real orgasm was after her boyfriend got his orders?

In between all this travelling and movie making, she takes time to inspect her new body. She has actual curves, now – her chest is fuller and her hips are wider. Her entire torso is wider – though she’s not sure if that’s because everything inside is slightly bigger or because her body realised it no longer had to conserve surface area anymore. Her thighs and calves have actual muscle to them, and she’s got an ass now, to support all the running and jumping she’s now physically capable of doing. Her arms are toned, and she can lift some pretty heavy things – she hoisted a motorbike over her head as a joke once and it somehow made it into one of the movies. She feels strong. She feels alive. She feels like she can take on the world.

The thing that changed the least is her face – it’s slightly less gaunt than it was, but it’s otherwise the same features. The same brown eyes, the same mouth, the same sharp cheekbones, the same nose.

She can’t actually sing and dance – there are people in the show who do that for her – but people cheer when she comes out on stage anyway. She supposes that she’s considered beautiful now, in every sense of the word. The peak of human perfection.

She’s therefore not surprised when the men cheer for her when she appears to them at the front in Italy. She is surprised that they’re so lewd to her face, until she remembers that they probably haven’t seen a woman in months, and while she’s not thrilled by the cat calls, she doesn’t let it bother her. She’s also surprised by Pepper’s appearance after the show, and definitely surprised by her willingness to help Toni to steal a plane – admittedly, with Howard’s help – and save her best friend.

“Who the hell are you?” one of the prisoners asks her, and she opens her mouth to answer and then stops.

These are men who have probably been on the front too long to have heard of Miss America, and battle-hardened soldiers who react best to chains of command and army ranks. Sid nips at her ear, and she takes a moment to think about the image she must present – tall, buff, short skirt, curls loose and wild, falcon perched on her shoulder, shield on her arm, helmet strapped on tight, scorch marks and cuts all over her legs.

“I – I’m Captain America.”

The silence she is met with is astounding. One bravely ventures, “Did you just say you were a Captain?”

Sid flares his wings and they all quieten. She shoots a question back at the guy who spoke up – she’s ready to commit to the lie if someone questions her further, but now is not the time to be worrying about names. “Where are the others?”

He gives her directions to some other room down some other corridor, and as she turns to leave, the first guy who spoke up asks, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, miss?”

She doesn’t even look back as she responds. “I’ve knocked out Adolf Hitler over 200 times. I’m good.”

The silence that comes after that sounds better than any standing ovation she’s ever received.

When they walk into camp the next morning – Rhodey and Dip thankfully alive and having just been regaled with everything that’s happened to her – Howard, Pepper and Phillips are all arguing about whether they should give up on her for dead. Toni and Sid volunteer themselves for disciplinary action and Phillips shares a look with his daemon and tells her it won’t be necessary. Well then.

The men are led by Rhodey in a cheer for Captain America, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her.

The next year or so, despite the responsibility of leading a team of six men across Europe to lay waste to the Hydra bases they come across, becomes one of the best years of her life. Her team has a 100% success rate, something she is insanely proud of, and not a single one of them minds that they’re being led by a woman. Almost everyone she meets now calls her Cap, even if they aren’t on her team, and it feels heady. It feels like being included. Howard makes her and her team weapons as top of the line as he can manage, given the resources he has, including her shield. “I can’t stop you from going out there,” he says as he presents her with it. “But I’m not going to let you get shot at without a chance to defend yourself.” He designs her a uniform – actual pants designed and made for her and with a hundred more pockets than she knows what to do with, and a jacket made of the strongest material he can muster.

There’s a little uniform for Sid, too – a little vest and helmet, and little metal guards for his feet with talon extensions on them for slashing at things. Chtízo’s the only one with hands small enough to put them on Sid – luckily Howard’s daemon settled into a form that can help him with building – and Howard and Chtízo are both beaming when Toni and Sid are decked out in their new uniforms.

“Nothing is too good for my little sister,” he says every time he presents her with something for the team and she mumbles a thanks.

“You work too hard,” she admonishes him. “Do you get enough sleep?”

He blinks at her. “You fight Nazis on a daily basis, you don’t even blink when you get shot at and you’re running around war torn Europe with six men. And you’re wearing pants. And you’re worried I work too hard?”

That’s the last they ever argue about who’s putting how much effort. Because, they silently agree, this is a war, this is for the greater good, and it’s worth both their lives to fight for it.

The war does take its toll on her. When she loses Rhodey, she almost quits. She doesn’t want to do this without him. She hasn’t done something without him since she was seven. And now she won’t ever again.

A part of her is almost relieved when she goes to put the plane down in the water. She hates that she’s going to break Howard’s heart, and she hates how distraught Pepper sounds over the radio, but she’s going to peace.

Or, that’s what she chooses to believe.

“We’ll get a drink when I get back, Pep.”

“The Stork Club, eight o’clock, Saturday. You Starks are always late.”

“We can grab a table in the corner and spend the entire time – ”

Pepper never hears how Toni wants to spend the entire night.

“History will say that the Starks siblings won the war,” Howard says at Toni Stark’s funeral, the night before Captain America’s state funeral. “But it is without doubt that the greater of the two died in the service of her country.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Joseph and Sarah Rogers’ little girl is finally born, it’s honestly about damn time. Stark Rogers Industries doesn’t need an heir, but everyone breathes a sigh of relief when the message comes from the hospital that a baby is born.
> 
> Steph's turn.

When Joseph and Sarah Rogers’ little girl is finally born, it’s honestly about damn time. Stark Rogers Industries doesn’t need an heir, per se, but everyone breathes a sigh of relief when the message comes from the hospital that, following a long labour with otherwise no complication, a baby girl is born. She is named Stephanie Greta by a tired Sarah and a proud Joseph, and her daemon is called Iyétis by an equally tired Méli and an equally proud Allagi. Both mother and child come home after a few days, and it is from that moment that her education begins.

It has always been said about the Stark and Rogers partners that Howard is the ideas man and Joe is the man who makes it happen. Steph, from a very young age, seems equally capable of both. She’s plopped in front of a million building blocks when she’s one and builds a structurally sound bridge between the sofa and the coffee table. She’s sat in front of some scraps and a small engine Uncle Howard brings over one day at age two and builds a toy car that actually runs. She’s presented with a full-fledged chemistry set most professionals would weep over at three and blows up half the kitchen – on purpose. Yiti spends most of his time as a monkey, so he can hold on to things with his tail and still pass Steph all the other things she needs. She secretly hopes Yiti will settle like this – or like Chtízo, an orangutan, who helps Uncle Howard build things, too.

Computers and machines and engines come as easy to Steph as breathing, and it is the day she presents her first circuit board to her father and Uncle Howard that she hears about Captain America for the first time.

Uncle Howard is less sad when he talks about her, when he tells little Steph stories about a little girl just like her who was brave and smart and only wanted to help people, about the woman who was a feminist icon and a brilliant leader and a kind person, about how he still goes out to look for her because he knows in his heart of hearts that he can bring her home. Steph laps this up, because she wants to be brave and good and strong like Captain America, and she dreams about Uncle Howard bringing the Captain home just like he wants to so badly, and she dreams about meeting the Captain just like _she_ wants to so badly. Yiti laps it up, too, changing into a falcon every time Howard tells the stories, and somehow, Uncle Howard and Chtízo are both more happy and more sad whenever that happens.

One evening when she’s nine, her and Yiti goes into the library to look at the photo albums when she sees Uncle Howard and Chtízo sitting in one of the big chairs. She loves the library, after the workshop, but she’s only allowed to go into Daddy’s workshop when Daddy is also there. The library has the best spots for playing hide and seek, it has books on every subject she could ever want to read about, it has big old maps that are Daddy’s from the war, and it has photo albums.

The albums aren’t just any kind of albums; they’re a collection of all of Daddy’s war time pictures, and a lot of them have Captain America in them. There are all sorts of pictures – ones of the two of them together, one of Uncle Howard and his sister, one of Daddy and Uncle Howard in London with Captain America and her Commandoes, pictures of Captain America striking a pose with her shield in a lab, pictures of Miss America movie posters, pictures of Cap and Daddy and Uncle Howard standing over a table and pointing at things. Usually, Uncle Howard and Chtízo only look at them with Steph and Yiti, and he’s always smiling when he talks about Cap.

That’s when she notices the fancy bottle and glass on the table next to him. Uncle Howard doesn’t live with them, he has a big old house in the city, Ma says, but everyone else in his family has died and he’s all alone in that house, and Uncle Howard hates being alone. Uncle Howard has his own room in their house in Brooklyn, and his own key so he can come and go as he needs, and even his own liquor cabinet so he doesn’t have to go into Daddy’s. She doesn’t know if this bottle is from Daddy’s or Uncle Howard’s, but she knows they only pull the fancy bottles out when it’s serious.

Tonight, Daddy and Ma are at some dinner thing Ma wanted to go to. Tonight, Uncle Howard is sadder than Steph’s ever seen him. His hair is all messed up, his clothes are all rumpled, he looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days and he looks like he hasn’t sleep well in years. Chtízo looks like she’s about to fall asleep where she is, her eyes are all bloodshot, and her fur looks limp and dull and not at all like it usually does.

Steph’s happy to see him, anyway.

“Uncle Howard!” she says, going over and hugging him as best as she can.

He hugs her back – if a pat on the head can be considered a hug. “Stephie.”

Steph wrinkles her nose. Up close, she can smell the alcohol. Ma would be so angry if she knew Uncle Howard was drinking like this. Sometimes, both Daddy and Uncle Howard get drunk and Ma has to go take care of both of them. Being an adult mostly seems like being sad, drinking because you are sad, and continuing drinking because you’ve finally forgotten what made you sad in the first place.

“Whatcha looking at?” Steph asks. She knows the answer, she can see the page he’s staring at, but sometimes people like to be asked. Sometimes they want to be able to tell you themselves, or sometimes they just don’t know how to say it until you ask. Robots are a little like that, too. They can’t give you the answer you need until you input the right code.

Uncle Howard doesn’t say anything for a while. He stares down at the page and takes a deep breath. It’s right in the middle of the Captain America section: of Uncle Howard with Captain America, Cap with the black Commando that was her right hand man, one of Uncle Howard and Daddy and Cap standing together. There’s a small one in the corner of Uncle Howard with his sister, a short woman with brown curly hair. Steph knows that’s Uncle Howard’s sister, who was integral to helping make Captain America, who was sort of a scientist and sort of a nurse and sort of a weapons technician, who died the same year Cap did.

“I’m looking at a hero, Stephie,” he says, running a hand over the picture of him, Daddy and Cap.

“Do you miss it?” Steph asks in a small voice.

His fingers stop over the space between Daddy’s head and Cap’s. “Every day,” he says in an equally small voice. They stay like that for a moment, both of them staring at this picture of a much younger Uncle Howard and Daddy and an at-her-peak Cap, Uncle Howards fingers still lingering in the space between Daddy and Cap like he knows there’s something missing.

“Run off to bed, Stephie,” he says, still in that quiet voice. “It’s getting late.”

Uncle Howard dies a few months later. Her first thought when she hears the news is that Howard will never be able to bring Captain America home now, and that someone has to go look for her now that Howard can’t do it. After days of endless pleading and Yiti spending whole days as a falcon, Joe pledges company funds towards the search for the body of Captain America, something Steph keeps up until what she figures is her dying day.

At the funeral, everyone wears black and speaks very quietly and talks about what a genius he was, what a pioneer, what a gifted creator, what an inventor, the last member of the great Stark family. She doesn’t understand why people speak quietly at funerals. Uncle Howard himself was never really quiet; surely it would be more in his memory to yell and laugh loudly and play roaring music? When she thinks of Uncle Howard, though, she doesn’t think of him when he was loud and laughing and happy; she thinks of him as he was that one night in their library, drunk and quiet and running his hand over the photo of Cap’s face.

She knows why her dad is quiet. He’s been drunk for three straight days. She heard Ma yelling at him the other day about chasing Howard to the grave. Steph muses about it at the time, but Yiti has another theory.

“I don’t think that’s what he’s doing,” Yiti confesses in the relative quiet of Steph’s room. “I think he’s just sad and lonely. Uncle Howard was his best friend. I think he just finds it easier not to think about it when he drinks.”

The funeral day is also the day she finds out the truth about Captain America. Ma had organised the entire day: the funeral, the press contingent, the official SRI statement, the wake, the food, the drinks, the guest list, the flowers, the casket, the readings, the procession, everything. There’s a state funeral from the state of New York in a week, but this is the private farewell for friends and family (and business partners and half the military), and the wake has an even smaller guest list. The wake is at the Rogers’ Brooklyn house, and Steph and Yiti are getting snacks out of the pantry when they hear two businessmen talking in the doorway of the kitchen. Steph and Yiti share a quick look and duck to crouch on the floor. You can’t see into the pantry unless you stand right in front of it, but no one’s supposed to be in the kitchen today, not even Steph and Yiti, and Steph doesn’t want to get in trouble with Ma.

“Stark was mostly the brains at SRI, I hope Rogers is up to the task,” one of them says.

“All Rogers has to do is sign things and push the funds where they need to be,” the other says. “Stane will take care of the rest. He’s been doing most of the business on SRI’s behalf for years.”

“The brass will certainly miss Stark,” the first one says.

“Which one?” the other asks sarcastically. “One of them built bombs and was richer than God, the other one ran around Europe in tight pants shooting Nazis.”

“What a woman,” the first one sighs. “I couldn’t tell you how many times I watched her movies as a teenager.”

“I think every guy on my block was as, ah, ‘patriotic’ as I was,” the other one laughs. “My brother gave me all his old posters and comics.”

“With the pages stuck together?” the first one laughs.

“Nah, he took those off to college with him,” the other one laughs in agreement. They move off into another room. Only Yiti’s around to watch Steph’s eyes grow the size of the carnations Ma had decorated the whole house with.

Huh. That explains a lot.

The day of the funeral changes everything. Captain America has a name, now – Antonia Stark, Toni for short, and the black Commando that’s always pictured with Cap has a name, too. Uncle Howard’s talked about them for years, Toni and Rhodey, but now that she knows Toni was also Cap, lots of other things make sense, too.

Like why Uncle Howard always started the story of Cap with a brief story of her childhood. And why Chtízo always looked sad whenever Yiti became a peregrine falcon. And why Joe always talked about Cap being more than a soldier – she’d obviously been a nurse and scientist first.

Howard’s death also changes her father, and it happens almost overnight. The entirety of the company rests on his shoulders now, and it shows. He turns towards angry words and alcohol, and he never hits Sarah but it’s a close call once or twice. Allagi snaps at everybody – she always did, Canadian geese are surprisingly vicious, but no daemon is spared from a sharp bite. Joe was always the quieter one where Allagi was more loquacious – now, Joe yells at everyone and everything, and Allagi only opens her mouth to snap at some poor daemon. He usually spends most of his time yelling at how worthless Steph is compared to Captain America, and not enough paying attention to Sarah and how unhappy she’s become. It’s clear to everyone how unhappy she is, but divorce is messy and Sarah’s wonderful but hasn’t had a real job in years, so she stays in the house that sucks the life out of her and Méli, and Steph can only watch.

Steph begins to hate him. She hates him for the man he’s become and she hates him for how he makes her feel about herself and she hates him for making Sarah so miserable. Whenever he starts yelling at her, she starts yelling back. She can’t stand bullies, and her father becomes the worst one she knows.

She’s relieved when she escapes to MIT. It means not having to be in the mansion in New York with her parents where both silence and noise are deafening. Her dad is just about dead to her, and her mom has withered away so much in the last five years Steph can barely recognise her now. She wants so bad to make her mom happy, but Sarah is suffering from something that Steph can’t fix. So her dad flat out tells her she’s worthless and her mom unintentionally makes her feel worthless and it’s not until she arrives in Boston that she feels like she can breathe again.

It’s at MIT that she meets Bucky. She’s at least three years younger than anyone else in any of her classes, and she’s probably smarter than most of then, and all of them resent her for it. Eh, what does she care? She’s there to get her degree, not make friends. It’s one night as she’s walking back to the condo Joe’s paying for from the library that a group of them jump her. No one hits her – they might not be as smart as her, but none of them are stupid enough to hit Joseph Rogers’ kid. Yiti snarls at all the daemons – an iguana, a badger, a lemur, a goose – and is definitely stubborn and enough of a dick to try to take them all on at once, but Steph doesn’t really want to get charged for assault, even if she doesn’t start it.

“Stand down,” she hisses at him.

Yiti just snarls louder. The older kids laugh at him, and it just makes him angrier.

A year ago, this might not have been such an issue – he could have shifted into something bigger and scared them away. But Yiti settled as a fox about six months ago, and both of them are still adjusting to the change (or lack thereof, really). She still doesn’t know if Yiti’s such a dick because she’s a nice person (or trying to be, at least) or if she’s a nice person because Yiti’s a dick. Daemonology scholars all agree that the bond is complementary, though, so it’s probably some combination of both.

“Such a fucking show off, know it all bitch, Rogers,” one of the older kids is saying, coming closer to her. She almost wishes the kid would touch Yiti, because touching someone else’s daemon is assault, no two ways about it, and she can have them expelled and financially ruined with no future job prospects and then everyone can just leave her the hell alone like she wants when some other voice speaks up.

“Is there a problem here?”

Everyone turns to look at the newcomer, some boy about the same age as the other older kids. His daemon is a dog – exactly what kind, Steph can’t tell – but she’s alert. The boy looks tall and well built, but there are way too many shadows to tell anything else about him.

The kid who was just insulting her takes a good long look at the newcomer. “Nothing,” he says. “Fuck off back to your own campus, loser.”

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” the new guy says, coming a little closer. “I bet you’re all pretty brave, though, four of you taking on a thirteen-year-old girl.”

“I’m not thirteen – ” Steph starts to say, but one of the older kids yells at her, “Go fuck yourself, Rogers, no one gives a shit.”

“Go pick on someone who matches your IQ, dickwad, there’s an elementary school down the road you can try your luck at,” Steph bites back.

“You don’t deserve to go here – ”

“ – on daddy’s dime – ”

“ – go back to kindergarten – ”

“You think getting into MIT was hard? I could make a computer program smarter than you that could do your lab work more efficiently than anything you could do in the next fifty years.”

The one that’s been the most vocal steps right up to her as if he’s going to hit her. Steph doesn’t even flinch. One bruised cheek to show up some moron with an ego complex would be well worth it.

One of the others pulls the main guy back. “Hey,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”

The main guy jolts, as if to shrug the other girl off, but his daemon, the goose, flutters her wings and he relents.

“See you round, Rogers,” he says as they turn as a group and walk off down the footpath. Steph doesn’t really care about all the things they were saying about her. It’s nothing she hasn’t heard before.

When the others leave, the stranger doesn’t immediately say anything to her. He mumbles under his breath about ‘fucking MIT prick bastards’, moves around in a wide circle like he’s looking for more of them, and then slowly makes his way towards her. She suddenly remembers watching a documentary about treating wounded animals, the way the vets and keepers walk around the animal carefully, telegraph their intentions and not make any sudden movements. His daemon, a dog that looks almost like a German shepherd, is watching the others leave, snarling at their backs.

The stranger’s a young-looking guy, and as he slowly comes towards her, she decides he has a friendly face. He doesn’t seem particularly threatening, ignoring the fact that he just told off a group of kids his age for picking on a fourteen-year-old girl.

“Are you alright?” he asks, and even his voice is friendly and non-threatening.

She shuffles the backpack on her shoulder. “Y-yeah, I’m ok.”

“You got someone to come pick you up?”

Her hands around the straps of her backpack tighten, because no, she definitely does not. Joseph had emerged from his drunken anger long enough to be pleased about her early acceptance into MIT, but it’s clear it never even occurred to him to send someone along to keep an eye on her, and in her desperation for independence, she’d never said anything. Boston is less stifling than New York, but not less lonely.

“No,” she bites out. “I’m ok, I can make my own way home.”

He looks for a second like he’s thinking of arguing against her, but he lets her go without saying anything else, and for the rest of the night and the next day, she resolutely does not think about the totally random stranger who helped her the night before.

Which is all shot to hell when, as she’s walking home from the library the next night, he and his daemon are leaning against a tree like they’ve been waiting for her. He’s munching on a bag of what looks like triple chocolate fudge snickerdoodle cookies from the place four blocks away that also delivers.

“So you _did_ make it home ok,” he says as he approaches her, and he sounds oddly pleased about this.

Steph’s angry about it before she can really think about why.

“What, you think I’d let some troglodyte with a cashew for a brain beat me up?” she snarked at him.

“No,” he conceded. “I did think you might verbally murder someone else, though, and I wanted to see the show.”

She learns his name is James Buchanan Barnes, but nobody’s called him James in ages, everyone calls him Bucky, and his daemon’s called Pali, and she’s a miniature American shepherd, not a German shepherd. He’s also from New York – what a weird coincidence – and also from Brooklyn – what a weirder coincidence – and it turns out they’ve only lived a few blocks away their whole lives.

She learns that he, too, hates bullies, and he doesn’t go to MIT but he’s in the ROTC at BU and he’s studying military history and even though they don’t really have anything in common, they get on surprisingly well. Bucky’s got four younger sisters back in Brooklyn and seems to take her on as another one, which actually works out for her when she thinks about how many times her big mouth and inability to keep her opinion to herself gets her into trouble. It’s probably very telling that the only person from her MIT days that she keeps in contact with is someone who did not, in fact, go to MIT with her.

She graduates summa cum laude of her class at seventeen, and the first thing that happens to her afterwards is that she gets called back to New York for a business meeting with the COO of SRI, Obadiah Stane. She’s always known Obie – some of her earliest memories of Joe From Before and Howard also have Obie in the background. Yiti’s never really liked Obie, but Yiti doesn’t really like anybody except for Bucky and Pali and Mom, so his opinion doesn’t really count. She remembers that Obie often played third wheel to the brilliance of Howard and Joe. Obie helped with the transition after Howard died, and has been covering for Joe basically ever since. It turns out what he wants to do is offer her a job – officially, with pay and benefits and all of it. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised; she’s been regularly handing designs over to R&D for years. She just figured she’d have more time.

“Kid,” he says to her after she tells him so. “You and I both know your old man isn’t going to be around forever. It could be five years – hell, it could even be ten – but when it happens, I gotta make sure you’re ready. And the best way I can help you get ready is by pushing you into the deep end.”

“Obie – ” she starts.

“I know it’s not great to think about,” he said. “But you’re almost an adult, Stephie. At the very least, we gotta get you involved in the company.”

“Obie, I graduated from MIT yesterday,” she says.

“No time like the present,” he says.

She doesn’t really _like_ the reasoning, but she understands it, and a week later she’s in the West Coast where R&D HQ is, out where they have the room for big sprawling buildings and wide roads and so many things they want her to blow up bigger and smarter and faster. It seems like everyone’s just waiting until she’s a legal adult, because when she turns eighteen, she gets promoted to head of R&D, the government contracts pick up in their thousands, she makes the cover of Time magazine by herself – no Joe hanging in the background – and the press starts hounding her. She has always been famous because of her dad, but now she is famous in her own right. People start calling her a patriot and a saviour and a genius and a hero. Patriot and saviour are new, if a little over the top, and people have been calling her a genius all her life, but it’s ‘hero’ that makes her cringe a little. A real hero is someone like Captain America, someone who goes out and fights evil and wins and sacrifices herself for the greater good, and Steph, as she has been repeatedly reminded for almost a decade, is not even near the same level as Captain America.

Steph hasn’t been back to New York in years when she gets the call. Of all the things that could have taken Joseph and Sarah Rogers out, a car accident is not high on the list of things she would have considered. The coroner’s report finds high levels of alcohol in Joe’s blood, high levels of diazepam in Sarah’s, and not a single thing missing from either of their bodies or the car. It’s ruled as an accident because the only one who knows how much her parents ended up hating each other is Steph herself and no one else would suspect Joe in a murder suicide, and just like that, Steph becomes the last Rogers and rumours about her stepping in as CEO start almost right away.

The mansion in Brooklyn is as cold and empty as its always been, but this time, it really is empty. Joe hasn’t had staff servicing the house in years, cursing both Howard and Sarah for being too self-indulgent and allowing him to get lazy. The only reason she stays at the house instead of in a hotel is because she knows what people will say. She is the grieving daughter of a monster of the American economy. She must be seen to pay her respects.

The funeral is tasteful if not extremely uncomfortable. Bucky and Pali are given leave to come stay with her for a week, and she spends most of it sitting in the library staring into the middle distance. Several times her hands go for the bottles of whiskey she knows Joe liked to keep stashed around the house, but remembers the way Uncle Howard was in the end and the man her father ended up becoming and she steels herself even harder. She cannot allow herself to become like them.

Bucky is her pillar of strength. It’s likely that if it hadn’t been for him and Pali at times force feeding Steph and forcing Steph and Yiti to get out of bed, she might have laid there all week and starved herself. It’s not romantic, though – not only does thinking about Bucky like that make her feel queasy, neither of them are in the right condition to appear attractive to each other. They’re both exhausted, they’re both cranky, they’re both slightly underfed, and Steph’s never felt less motivated to do anything in her whole life.

At the reading of her parents’ wills, it becomes clear that either Joe hasn’t updated his will in ten years or this has somehow always been his game plan, because Steph gets everything. The company, the mansion in New York, the chateau in France, the island in the Caribbean, everything her parents ever owned now belongs to her, and she becomes one of the top five richest women in the world at twenty. The first thing that happens is that a hesitant date is set for her to assume the position of CEO from the interim CEO – Obie – a month after her twenty first birthday. The second thing that happens is that Steph sets up the Sarah Rogers Foundation, and people flock in their thousands to see the elusive Stephanie Rogers give a press conference about her hopes for the Foundation named after her late mother. The third thing that happens is that she meets Margaret Carter.

She’s interviewing people for the position of her personal assistant. She doesn’t really want to, it’s honestly not all that necessary, but Obie says it’ll be good for her in the long run and Yiti and Bucky are all for anything that might get Steph another friend (or laid), so she goes along. She’s tired. She’d already done about five of these today, twelve the day before, fifteen the day before, and she has eight more to go before she can go back to her condo and collapse on her bed. Yiti doesn’t say so, but she knows he regrets campaigning so strongly for this. He mostly sits on the top corner of the bookshelf, staring each applicant dead in the eye in some attempt to intimidate them that works more than she suspects it should.

She shows the last person out – Stuart somebody – and calls out, “Margaret Carter?”

Somehow, like she’d managed to time it perfectly, a woman strides into the waiting area, her heels clicking on the tile, in a blue dress, a red hat, and matching red lipstick. Her eyes are open and inquisitive, she walks like she means business, and she holds herself like there is not a single ounce of bullshit you could throw at her that she couldn’t handle. Her daemon is a monkey, walking nimbly beside her, with wide brown eyes that take in stock of the entire room. In one swift movement, the monkey reaches up for the woman’s hand and she pulls him onto her opposite shoulder, a move that’s surely been practised before despite how natural it looks. Steph is immediately reminded of Uncle Howard and Chtízo, in the days when he’d been at least a functioning alcoholic, always on the move and so in sync with each other and not once doubting their own firm grasp or each other’s.

“I’m Margaret Carter,” the woman says in a crisp English accent, and sticks her hand out for Steph to take. Steph can only blink in response. This woman could have said she was Charlemagne reincarnated and Steph would have believed her.

Steph recovers quickly and takes Margaret’s hand. “Thanks for coming in today,” she says, and shows her in to the office where she’s holding the interviews. It’s small and boring and it isn’t even her office, it’s a spare cupboard down in HR, but Margaret doesn’t even notice. From the second they made eye contact, her attention’s been on Steph. It’s almost intimidating.

Yiti’s curled up on the bookshelf like he’s been all day until he sees Margaret and her daemon come in. He raises his head, stares at the both of them, and gives his tail a small flick. “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself, Miss Carter?” Steph says, adjusting her posture in her chair.

Peggy, as she tells Steph to call her, is a little older than Steph, has a double degree in business and finance, has been at SRI for three years and isn’t at all afraid to tell Steph off for being anti-social. Her daemon, Epitychia, has a low, calming voice that kind of reminds Steph of a butler.

She’s also totally out of Steph’s league.

It’s both helpful for her general wellbeing and also detrimental to her antisocial tendencies that Yiti and Tick get on so well, which surprises everyone and Yiti is particularly smug about. Yiti will absolutely tattle on her to Tick the first chance he gets, and Tick’s never kept anything from Peggy and probably won’t start just because Steph hasn’t stepped out of her workshop in three days. Peggy is scarily efficient, and by the time her twenty first birthday rolls around, the only reason she feels even remotely prepared for the job is Peggy. Peggy also somehow becomes Steph’s last line of defense between her and everything the outside world wants from her, and when Peggy and Bucky meet, Steph is truly terrified.

The first thing she does after she becomes CEO is immediately moves the headquarters for SRI to California. Her reason, she shares in a rare press conference, is that SRI needs a new home to echo the new era in weapons design. The real reason is that New York is haunted with the memories of her parents, and she feels less like they’re shadowing her, disapproving of everything, in sunny LA. She builds a home in Malibu because she damn well can, she builds an AI that she’s damn well proud of, and she builds an empire in weapons design that makes her dad’s stuff look like child’s play because she’s going to damn well prove that she’s not worthless. Somehow, impossibly, things begin to settle. Steph becomes a competent CEO and an even better industrialist, Bucky gets promoted to Captain and becomes the Army liaison to SRI, Peggy corrals Steph (and by extension, the rest of SRI – and man, isn’t that a thought?) into more shape and responsibility than it seems possible for one human to achieve, Yiti and Tick become inseparable, and the Sarah Rogers Foundation becomes a force to be reckoned with.

This all comes to a very sudden halt seventeen years later in Afghanistan.

It’s amazing she was even there to begin with. Steph, for all her lifetime of fame, has always been a private person. She guards her personal life with a fierce determination, and her reputation as a mysterious genius inventor grows. There’s a lot of speculation about what an intelligent, rich, successful, beautiful woman like herself would get up to in her free time, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. There _are_ parties – because Jan is an old friend, and has always been good to Steph, so Steph is more than happy to model at Fashion Week if that’ll help Jan out – and there _are_ dates – mostly people that Bucky and Peggy try to set her up with, and she even dates one of them for about seven months before she realises she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him – but Steph’s content to potter around her workshop, quietly bringing her dreams to life.

Afghanistan is one drawn out nightmare that she relives every day for years afterwards.

SRI’s been the Army’s number one contractor for decades. They had refused to deal directly with anyone that wasn’t Howard or Joseph, and now it’s Steph’s turn. Bucky’s a competent officer, and fully deserving of his post after his two tours – but it’s no secret that Stephanie Rogers does not suffer fools lightly, and Captain Barnes is well known for being a close personal friend of Ms Rogers’ since their college days. The message came from both Obie and Bucky for her and Yiti to pack their bags and go to Afghanistan to test the Jericho, and so they do.

It’s one thing to not see something coming because you have been negligent. It’s another to not see it coming because the betrayal is _just_ that unexpected and it totally blindsides you. As a business woman and somebody so proud of how much she invests in the future, she’s a little ashamed that she didn’t predict this.

She’s not sure how she should have predicted the personal and professional betrayal of a father figure she’s known her entire life – who not only tried to have her killed, but then tried to kill her himself – but she knows she should have expected some kind of power play from Obie. She just doesn’t expect it to end the way it does: with good people dead, several million dollars’ worth of property damage that she’s more than happy to foot (like it’ll make up for her sins), and an arc reactor in her chest – that, spoiler alert, almost kills her _and_ nearly gets her and everyone she loves killed, fuck you very much Nick Fury for your non-helpful help and your deceptively friendly red-headed assassins – implanted where her sternum used to be.

The only good thing to come out of all that mess is the armour. She had to carve out extra space in the shoulders for Yiti to join her in the suit, which is why everything Mark II onwards end up looking so masculine and broad-shouldered. She’s still a little hesitant about the name – first of all, technically it’s a gold titanium alloy and she doesn’t care that it’s not as catchy as ‘iron’, it’s wrong; and second of all, it’s totally sexist of the media to assume it was a man because now the name’s stuck and Peggy’s already trademarked Iron Man and all affiliated images – but hey, anything’s better than the Merchant of Death. She’ll take it.

The reactor itself, comparatively, is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It’s just a thing. Steph’s learned how to deal with the fact that she’s got a night light embedded about four inches deep into her chest that comes with a daily dose of chest pain, back pain, neck pain (occasionally) and PTSD. She refuses to take most types of medication, though – she doesn’t have a problem, but she knows Joe did, and she knows the likelihood of it being genetic, and she sure as hell doesn’t want to tempt fate over something like this. If it hurts, it hurts. She’s not taking her chances.

The thing with Peggy, though, is definitely a bad thing. There had been a moment, right before the whole Iron Man thing had happened, where they had almost…Steph doesn’t really know, actually. There just. Had been a moment.

But Steph’s ~~a superhero~~ Iron Man now, and it doesn’t matter if Peggy’s willing to take any of the risks that might come with being Steph’s…that. Steph can’t ask her to do that. It’s already bad enough that she’d made Peggy CEO when she’d thought she was dying. She can’t ask Peggy to start something with her now that it’s almost certain she’s going to die because of her new…job. It’s one of the few things her and Yiti have consistently and loudly disagreed on. At the end of the day, Steph’s right, and Yiti knows it – it doesn’t matter how selfish Steph (and mostly Yiti) want to be, they can’t ask Peggy to do that. They can’t ask Peggy to allow herself to be second place to something that could ultimately lead to Steph’s death.

Almost dying on an uncomfortably consistent basis gives Steph new perspective. Iron Man takes priority now. The company’s important, too, but that’s Peggy’s to manage, now. Iron Man is Steph’s new lens through which she sees everything – how can she best protect her family around her? How can she best protect SRI? How can she best protect the world at large?

She’s reluctant to, but she and Yiti agree to consult with SHIELD. It still stings a little from when they kicked her off their poor excuse of a firefighters calendar, but as far as she can tell, it’s the only international organisation or military force that is not actively shoving weapons contracts down her throat. She’s been out of the weapons game for years at this point, but some people seem to be hoping that she’ll be willing to make an exception for them, as though it’s not universally known that Steph Rogers, genius, billionaire, recluse, philanthropist, does not suffer fools.

Working with SHIELD is a new experience for them. For starters, they’re not the ones actually calling the shots, but that’s mostly because no one’s presumed to tell them what to do since before MIT. Nick Fury says jump and she might say something that would have gotten her mouth washed out as a child and pout and put it on the backburner to accommodate her SRI work, but she’ll jump. Not to mention SHIELD has different tech and servers and interfaces that all need desperate upgrading before she can do anything. She knows Fury’s conned her into doing it for them, but the alternative is going to some expo in Germany where they’ve given Hammer his own panel or sifting through all the paperwork Peggy’s left her, and Steph’s a lot of things but she’s not a masochist.

In the days she thought she was dying, Steph pulls the funding from the one thing she promised herself she’d never quit on: the search for Captain America. It hurts her to do it, considering it had been the one thing she’d begged Joe for when Uncle Howard had died, but after 70 years…it almost seems impossible.

She diverts it to things she knows will survive her – science scholarships to the top 10 emerging STEM high schools across the country, an engineering scholarship at MIT, a huge donation to the New York Hall of Science.

Eight months later, when she isn’t dying anymore and construction on the Tower is already well underway, she remembers. All her enquiries, however, say the same thing.

_All information regarding Project Standard has been requisitioned on behalf of SHIELD._

Those _bastards_.

It’s a good thing she left herself a back door in their security when they consulted her about consulting her.

She’s knee deep in Alpha level security codes when it occurs to her that if someone at SHIELD was doing their job properly, they should have seen they were getting hacked and started doing something to stop it. As it is, nothing happens. The files don’t get easier to unencrypt, nor do they get harder. They’re simply there, waiting to be uncovered.

She’s hip deep in Alpha level security files when she comes across all the Project Standard files – and come on, seriously, Project Standard had been Howard’s joke name for years, at least come up with – huh.

The first file for Project Standard is dated March 1949 and the Senior Agent listed is Howard Stark.

It’s been a SHIELD operation this entire time and she never knew.

She pushes down the anger (she’s not sure who to be angry at but in all likeliness she’ll probably take it out on herself, she might not be a masochist but she does engage in self-flagellation an awful lot) and keeps reading. There are a few perfunctory reports from the last six decades that are all some version of go fish, but then –

_11/15/2011_

_Wreckage of the Valkyrie found. Captain America and daemon confirmed and recovered. Vitals indicate signs of life._

‘Signs of life’.

What on God’s green earth?

Her first thought is that it’s impossible – there’s no godly way Captain America could have survived the crash, the crushing pressure of the ice, and the subzero temperatures of the Arctic for seventy years. Her second thought is to reconsider – there’s so much about the serum that was never recorded, or at least not anything that Joe or Uncle Howard ever held on to or anything that the SSR or SHIELD keeps archived anywhere. The only people who knew anything in depth about the serum are dead – or, apparently, miraculously showing signs of life despite all logic to the contrary.

She dives back in.

_11/17/2011_

_Captain America and daemon brought to NYHQ and placed under observation._

_11/18/2011_

_Captain America and daemon recovery process beginning. Initial medical observations suggest that subjects will likely survive the thawing process. Projected completion time: 10 days._

_11/23/2011_

_Captain America and daemon continue to show signs of life. Ongoing medical observations suggests that the thawing will be complete in 3 days. It is unclear whether the subjects will wake upon completion._

And the most recent one from only the other day.

_11/25/2011_

_Thawing process has escalated and is likely to be completed in the next 24 hours. Theories suggest that the presence of the serum has kept the subjects in a cryogenic state since 1945 and that the serum now is speeding up the process. Doctors theorise that the subjects will pass into a coma-like state for up to 3 days before fully regaining consciousness._

And all the reports for the last four months all have the same Senior Agent listed.

Agent himself.

Captain America. Alive. Recovering somewhere in New York.

It takes half her brain power and two whole seconds to decide what to do next.

“JO, call Peggy,” she says.

“Connecting you to Peggy Carter,” JO responds. It only rings twice before Peggy picks up. Steph likes that about Peggy – that despite how much grief she put Peggy through when Peggy was her PA, despite how furious Peggy was after Steph lied about dying, despite how awkward it was for them to patch their friendship together after their almost thing, Peggy will always take Steph’s calls.

“What?” Peggy answers brusquely.

“Do you still have the number for that guy from SHIELD?” Steph asks with no preamble.

“If I give it to you, are you going to abuse this privilege by continually harassing him?” Peggy fires back.

Given that Steph only intends to harass him the one time, she feels pretty confident in her answer. “No.”

She doesn’t see Peggy roll her eyes but she knows that’s exactly what Peggy’s doing.

It doesn’t take long to start on Agent Agent’s case when she finally gets him on the phone.

“So, fun thing I just found when I was scrolling through my news feed just now,” she starts casually when he answers.

“We considered bringing you in on the project,” he says, smooth as silk and already knowing what she’s talking about. He’s probably been monitoring her progress the entire time she’s been going through their files.

“I’ve been in on it since I was five,” she hisses down the line, all semblance of nonchalance immediately forgotten in the face of something that feels like betrayal but has no real right to be called that. ‘ _When were you going to tell me?’_ feels juvenile, but out of everything else she suddenly wants to yell at him, it’s the only one that makes the most sense in this context.

“We found her about three weeks after you pulled the funding. Some Russian civilian group found the Valkyrie – not that they knew what it was – and sent word to the nearest base.”

Well, damn. _Three weeks_.

“What’s the process at now?” she asks. She’s not going to pretend she doesn’t have a stake in this, personal or otherwise, even as Yiti shakes his head at her. She makes a shushing noise at him and he bites gently at her wrist.

“Fully thawed out,” Coulson confirms. “They’re both asleep now – not quite a coma, but definitely unconscious. We expect them to wake up tomorrow morning.”

“I want to meet her,” she says without really thinking about it. Coulson doesn’t have any tells, but she thinks he might have raised an eyebrow at that if she could see his face. If anyone might understand, though, it’s Captain America’s ultimate fanboy, Philip J Coulson.

“I thought you might,” he replies. It’s almost kind, certainly the kindest she’s ever heard him, and she knows he’s hearing what she’s not openly admitting.

_I need to see if my father was right._


End file.
